


The Floating World

by bricksandbones



Category: Destined to love, Original Work
Genre: Death Wish, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:01:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9247088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bricksandbones/pseuds/bricksandbones
Summary: "Flowers ought to be cut while they're still fresh.""You would burn everything."





	

**Author's Note:**

> They say to start as you mean to go on - disregard that. I don't know if I mean to go on, let alone how. But let's not burn all the bridges now. Let's just begin; I suppose that in order to "go on" one has, by definition, to begin somewhere.
> 
> I seem to have come across, by pure coincidence, quite a few things about 1850s Japan lately. Like many periods of recorded history, I find it profoundly depressing. What makes people resolved to survive through such difficult times? How are there still people alive at all? And who would want to write all this stuff down? 
> 
> A certain recent portrayal of Okita Soji made me think. Considering the medium, I don't know that these particular thoughts were intended. Probably I'm projecting. Probably, we're intended to feel incredulous pity at his detached view of the world and not "oh my goodness, that's ME". (I actually think this is the closest I've come to empathy.) I don't know too much about the historical Okita, only that he collapsed once during the Ikedaya Inn incident and that he eventually died young of tuberculosis. I just speculate - what leads a man known for his swordsmanship (and thus, presumably, some level of physical fitness) to collapse in such a fashion? Likewise, I don't know much about the historical Isoei. I suspect, however, that her life was not what we would call happy.
> 
> That is the context. But this story isn't really about the context. They are a convenient backdrop for these thoughts I keep having - a more plausible backdrop than my family and two cats and a university degree. Please forgive that, and my Wikipedia reading of history. I felt the need to borrow some pathos. The truth is, I think that these thoughts can occur legitimately in any context (even mine) - but I know that point of view doesn't elicit much sympathy.

“Isoei? I’ve never heard of anyone by that name,” Okita said with a bland smile.

_(“Oh, so you know Okita? No, he's probably forgotten. Regardless…he seems to be shrinking by the day. Somebody really needs to remind that boy that he is not made of the aether…although he may well be trying to attain that state through transmutation.”)_

—

Regardless of his claims, Okita did remember Isoei. Bored, he’d made a halfhearted enquiry after her one evening in Shimabara. He had hardly expected to be summoned by messenger late the following night.

“This is rather irregular,” he’d observed as he was ushered into her room. It was dimly lit and surprisingly sparse, and smelled like ink and dust. A diminutive woman in white face paint sat at the desk in the centre of it, gently floating a brush across a sheet of paper. She peered up at him, one hand still pulling her sleeve back as she set the brush down. She smiled.

“Oh, so you’re Okita,” she said airily. “Do make yourself comfortable.”

He sat across from her, noting the absence of refreshments.

“I was given to understand that appointments with you had to be booked months in advance.”

She rolled up the scroll she had been working on and set it aside. “Well,” she began, smoothing out another sheet. “You’re hardly my usual customer. Besides.” She smiled at him again, slyly. “We courtesans must always appear to be more in demand than we are, yes? People so often conflate rarity with value. But _you_ aren’t here because you value my company. I am a distraction. So allow me to be distracting…and distracted.”

He allowed himself to be amused. “What are you doing?”

She wet her brush and wrote a few characters on the paper, thoughtfully. He noticed the strokes she was using, which were stronger than those she had employed previously. “There are some customers who are pleased by…mementos,” she explained, barely sparing him a glance. “Evidence that I’ve been thinking of them in my spare time. What nonsense - I have no spare time.” She made a flurry of short strokes on the paper. Her writing was aggressive and compact.

He looked around, noting a pile of papers in the corner as well as a half-finished painting. “I take it, then, that this is not your reception room.”

She laughed. “No! What you’re getting, my lord, is an unheard-of insight into the illusion of romance.”

“Unheard-of? So this is going to cost me a fortune?” he teased as she stared critically at the haiku she had just composed.

“You’re entertaining me, I’m entertaining you - what is this talk of cost?” she enquired, pretending to be offended. “We can trade insights - leave me something of the legendary Okita, and I’ll call it even.”

“You really should be more specific,” he advised her. “Something. Anything?” He picked at his sleeve, dislodging a small, faded leaf. “Will this do?” He was surprised by the girlish laughter that bubbled forth.

“Oh, nobody told me you were amusing!” she exclaimed, discarding her brush and giving him her full attention. Her smile was suddenly sweet. “I think I like you. How do I keep you coming back?”

Disconcerted, he shook his head. “No, I think I’ve seen enough. No offence,” he added. “But I don’t think I can afford you.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Well. Price can be negotiated, of course - but no. That isn’t what you meant, is it?”

—

_“My favourite? My favourite clients are the ones who pay their bills on time. I hate to be so mercenary, but it’s the only way I can afford to work for myself.”_

—

She was, as he remembered, a small woman, whose chief distinguishing feature was her amber eyes.

“I would happily burn Kyoto to the ground,” she confided with a sardonic smile. “If I did not know that it would be rebuilt, over and over, just as it has been before. What has changed? People suffer, but they find a way.”

“You would burn everything,” Okita reiterated quite calmly.

“Everything,” she confirmed.

“The world itself?”

She reverberated with genuine laughter. “Yes - hypothetically, the world itself.”

He sighed. “I don’t like you,” he admitted, “but you may be the only person who understands this.”

She smiled, cataloguing and discarding the sting. “Really now?”

“Kotoko doesn’t agree,” he said abruptly, revealing the reason for his visit.

“She’s too kind.”

“Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind,” he remarked, tracing the rim of his sake cup.

“I’ll remember that,” she answered.

—

He made another appointment to see Isoei shortly after the Ikedaya incident. As before, he found his request granted surprisingly quickly. She received him in her study.

“I hear you collapsed at the Ikedaya,” she began without preamble, pouring. “Supposedly, your men feared that they would be called upon to die on the spot. I’ve never met anyone who could so effectively be their own worst enemy.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he retorted, “as, by definition, one can’t meet oneself.”

“Well, what are you here for?”

“What do you suppose the future holds?” he asked, downing his cup of sake even as she tutted.

“You know, you’re only the second person ever to ask me that. For good reason - it doesn’t matter. I don’t know.”

“I’m dying, aren’t I?”

“We’re all dying,” she said mildly, looking him over with a critical eye. “I’ll need more context than that.”

He chuckled grimly. “All right - I suppose I’m dying more quickly than the average person, then?”

“Ah.” There was a long pause as she sipped from her cup. In the end, she smiled. “Debatable, what with all these people dropping dead like flies.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t care if I die,” he continued morosely, “but I fear for Kotoko.”

“As do I.”

“Nothing good can come of her involvement in this - I can’t allow it.” He looked terribly conflicted, and for a moment she was afraid that he might cry.

“Come now. She’s an adult,” she reminded him. “She has a right to decide her own life. She’s decided that it’s better with the likes of us in it - and who really knows otherwise?” Changing the subject, she added, “Do you know, all I dream of these days is fire. I keep waking up thinking I’m being burned alive. Does that make me a pyromaniac?” she asked, keeping her tone falsely light even as she shuddered. “Perhaps it’s an omen. A good omen, even. Flowers ought to be cut while they’re still fresh, after all.”

“As morbid as ever.” He attempted a smile.

She sighed, and started taking down her hair. “Humour me,” she said at his look of surprise. “As a last request between friends.” She led him to her room - her private room, he gathered, little more than an alcove furnished with a washbasin and small futon. He watched as she carefully removed her powder and rouge. Beneath the makeup, her skin was smooth, and unblemished but for the cavernous shadows under her eyes. The yellow-green eyes she was so famous for seemed out of place without their usual backdrop of stark white. She was almost more beautiful without the artifice, but it was an alien, disconcerting beauty that had probably sealed her fate.

“You’re basically a baby,” he murmured, feeling a sudden surge of tenderness towards her. The jaded oiran had vanished, leaving in her place a vulnerable young woman. He pondered how long she had been selling herself.

Her eyes fluttered shut as she drew in a long breath. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s pitied me,” she exhaled. “I’d forgotten what it feels like.”

“You’re lucky that anyone ever has,” he rejoined, not meaning to be unkind. “It’s a rare thing in this cruel world of ours.” He watched the moisture beading on her lashes. “Come here.” Impulsively, he reached out and folded her in his arms. “Everything will be fine,” he promised, though he didn’t believe it himself. “When I said I didn’t like you,” he began.

“You thought I was a coward,” she finished for him. “Sitting here with a death wish, amidst all the trappings of life.”

“You’re quick to be hard on yourself,” he commented. “I don’t know that I did better. It’s one thing to chase after death, and another to endanger one’s comrades in the process. I swore that my body would never fail me in a fight - but it seems I can’t control that sort of thing.”

“Well, you’re not dead yet,” Isoei observed. “Fortunately or otherwise - so you’d better get going.”

“Oh, I’m dismissed?”

She gave him that sweet smile. “I do believe you have a sword to sharpen, and I’ve a business to run.” Suddenly sombre, she added, “I won’t see you again.” It sounded like a premonition. “Remember me, won’t you?”

“I will,” he promised.

—

Isoei perished scarcely a month later, in the Great Genji Fire that followed the Kinmon Incident. In the ensuing chaos, her remains were never found. Like so many residents of the pleasure quarter, she left no one behind who mourned her.

Okita did not mourn, but he thought of her on his deathbed as Edo erupted in flames around him. He remembered how strangely young she had looked and dared to imagine that, perhaps, she had survived.

"And what kind of life would that be?" he imagined her saying, smiling through the fire as she burned. Suddenly, her voice seemed to come from a spot right beside him. "Hello, old friend. Did you care, after all? You held on far longer than I would've expected."

**Author's Note:**

> As an aside - I leave it open here whether Okita collapses due to tuberculosis or some other ailment. The really important thing is that it highlights to him his mortality and opens a window of doubt as to whether he really wants to die.
> 
> (Re DTL: I can't even. I really need the love stories I read to have a happy ending. Why did I ever think something set in the Bakumatsu era could have a happy ending?
> 
> I guess I was hoping to work through my death wish by proxy. I've concluded that, actually, not wanting to die might be a terrifying thing. Maybe I don't want to be rid of my wish, after all. Maybe I never want to get that attached. Maybe I never want anyone to be so attached to me that I could make them cry. Is it easier not to remember, and does that make that the right thing?)


End file.
